The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is the 1915 poem (The first publication in Britain was also in 1915) that marked the start of T. S. Eliot’s career as one of the twentieth century’s most influential poets. The poem, also referred to simply as Prufrock, is one of the most anthologized 20th century poems in the English language. The poem takes the form of a dramatic monologue, and uses the “stream of consciousness” literary technique.
Composed mainly between February 1910 and July or August 1911, the poem was first published in the June 1915 issue of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse (Chicago) after Ezra Pound, the magazine’s foreign editor, persuaded Harriet Monroe, the magazine’s founder, that Eliot was unique: “He has actually trained himself AND modernized himself ON HIS OWN. The rest of the promising young have done one or the other, but never both.” This was Eliot’s first publication of a poem outside of school or university publications.
In the drafts, the poem had the subtitle Prufrock among the Women. Eliot said “The Love Song of” portion of the title came from “The Love Song of Har Dyal,” a poem by Rudyard Kipling. The form of Prufrock’s name is like the name that Eliot was using at the time: T. Stearns Eliot. It has been suggested that Prufrock comes from the German word “Prüfstein” meaning “touchstone”. There was a “Prufrock-Littau Company” in St Louis at the time Eliot lived there, a furniture store; in a 1950 letter, Eliot said, “I did not have, at the time of writing the poem, and have not yet recovered, any recollection of having acquired this name in any way, but I think that it must be assumed that I did, and that the memory has been obliterated.”
As it shows only surface thought and images, it is considered difficult to interpret exactly what is going on in the poem. Laurence Perrine wrote, “[the poem] presents the apparently random thoughts going through a person’s head within a certain time interval, in which the transitional links are psychological rather than logical”. This stylistic choice makes it difficult to determine exactly what is literal and what is symbolic. On the surface, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” relays the thoughts of a sexually frustrated middle-aged man who wants to say something but is afraid to do so, and ultimately does not. The dispute, however, lies in who Prufrock is talking to, whether he is actually going anywhere, what he wants to say, and to what the various images refer.
It is not evident to whom the poem is addressed. Some believe that Prufrock is talking to another person or directly to the reader, while others believe Prufrock’s monologue is internal. Perrine writes “The ‘you and I’ of the first line are divided parts of Prufrock’s own nature”, while Mutlu Konuk Blasing suggests that the “you and I” refers to the relationship between the dilemmas of the character and the author. Similarly, critics dispute whether Prufrock is going somewhere during the course of the poem. In the first half of the poem, Prufrock uses various outdoor images (the sky, streets, cheap restaurants and hotels, fog), and talks about how there will be time for various things before “the taking of toast and tea”, and “time to turn back and descend the stair.” This has led many to believe that Prufrock is on his way to an afternoon tea, in which he is preparing to ask this “overwhelming question”. Others, however, believe that Prufrock is not physically going anywhere, but rather, is playing through it in his mind.
Perhaps the most significant dispute lies over the “overwhelming question” that Prufrock is trying to ask. Many believe that Prufrock is trying to tell a woman his romantic interest in her, pointing to the various images of women’s arms and clothing and the final few lines in which Prufrock laments that the mermaids will not sing to him. Others, however, believe that Prufrock is trying to express some deeper philosophical insight or disillusionment with society, but fears rejection, pointing to statements that express a disillusionment with society such as “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons” (line 51). Many believe that the poem is a criticism of Edwardian society and Prufrock’s dilemma represents the inability to live a meaningful existence in the modern world. McCoy and Harlan wrote “For many readers in the 1920s, Prufrock seemed to epitomize the frustration and impotence of the modern individual. He seemed to represent thwarted desires and modern disillusionment.”
Finally, readers and critics are not sure what the many images refer to and what they represent. For example, “yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes” (line 15) has been interpreted as many things, from symbolism for the decline of society (in a similar manner as the Valley of Ashes in The Great Gatsby, another Modernist work),[citation needed] to a reference to the behaviour of a cat. As the poem uses the stream of consciousness technique, it is often difficult to determine what is meant to be interpreted literally and what is symbolic, what is actual and what is subconscious imagery or both. In general, Eliot uses imagery which is indicative of Prufrock’s character, representing aging and decay. For example, “When the evening is spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherized upon a table” (lines 2-3), the “sawdust restaurants” and “cheap hotels,” the yellow fog, and the afternoon “Asleep…tired… or it malingers” (line 77), are reminiscent of languor and decay, while Prufrock’s various concerns about his hair and teeth, as well as the mermaids “Combing the white hair of the waves blown back / When the wind blows the water white and black,” show his concern over aging.
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